


Snippets of Us

by JustAPassingGlance



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 22:36:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2599049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of seblaine drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Upon Your Lips

Before Sebastian’s name slipped from his lips—a breathy, sighed moan. Dark and heavy. Tripping and tumbling and pouring out. The liquid syllables roughed up and made harsher and more gentle in turn—he had an entire vocabulary.

It had been a good vocabulary. Thousands of words to speak and think. Words with distinct and disparate meanings and others that sounded different but meant the same thing. Words for every day of the week. Words that described and invigorated and expressed.  

All those words had been drowned out by three syllables that his lips almost managed to draw out into four.

_Se-bas-tian. Se-bas-ti-an._

The syllables crashed into every pore, filled up all the parts of him he had thought were empty, before they flowed from his mouth, leaving a void in their wake.

The cycle was repeated in an eternity that lasted only a minute, or was it a minute that turned into eternity? He was filled up and emptied out over and over and over as Sebastian’s name rang in his ears and tore from his throat.

An entire vocabulary erased and forgotten in light of one word that made all the others obsolete.

 _Se-bas-tian._   _Se-bas-ti—_


	2. Coffee Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Blaine and Sebastian have recently moved to a new city and have a slightly unorthodox way of finding a new coffee place.

“So,” he looked up as Blaine set his coffee down on the table and took off his jacket, draping it carefully over the back of his chair, “who are we today?”

With squinting eyes Blaine tried to decipher the barista’s scrawl. “Shane, apparently.” It was one difficulty his parent’s hadn’t expected him to face when saddling him with his ‘classic but unusual’ name.

“Nice to meet you, Shane. I’m," he looked at his own cup. "Sebstein.” He wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “It’s like they’re purposefully trying to be stupid. In what country is that even a name?” Pushing the untouched cup away from him in disgust he kept up a muttered stream of curses at the incompetent people of the world.

“Guess we can cross this place off the list.” It was unfortunate, really. Their coffee might not have been the best they’d tried (that honor went to a cute little shop in which they were Blake and Sibastiaan) but their biscotti was excellent. 

"Be right back," he said, leaving his boyfriend to his mutterings and going back up to the counter. "Another almond biscotto please. And a chocolate and pistachio.” 

Might as well stock up while they were there. 


	3. Forgiveness is Not Forgetting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some nightmares Sebastian can’t keep at bay, especially when he’s the cause of them.

The whimpering had started 20 minutes ago. The thrashing not long after. At the first low moan he had awoken and slipped from the bed. Long nights of experience had taught him that touch, no matter how gentle, wouldn’t soothe, would only make it worse.

Early on he had tried to just leave the room. He tried to go to sleep on the couch or watch television or anything that would get him away from those cries. But he couldn’t stay away for long. The only thing worse than watching Blaine suffering was knowing he was suffering alone.

On particularly bad nights he would play music. Some oldies radio station he pretended to like even though he had never listened to it before they started sleeping together. A left over remnant of his infancy, when his mother danced around him humming along with the Rat Pack.

His voice didn’t help. Whether it was quiet reassurances or a murmured song, it only ever made things worse, forced a whimper into a full out cry.

Because that night after the Sadie Hawkins dance wasn’t the only one Blaine had nightmares about.

Despite the whispered apologies and the promises of forgiveness, neither of them had forgotten. Neither had truly moved beyond it, no matter what Blaine might say. Not when the sound of Sebastian’s voice caused him to curl up on his side and yell out, hands clutching at his head in a mimicry of events long since passed.

Maybe it was Sebastian’s penance—having to bear witness to this, no matter how infrequently it happened. Powerless to do anything other than make sure their softest blanket was wrapped around his fiancée, so when he finally started to come to it would be to the complete opposite of the cold pavement haunting his sleep.

Blaine started mumbling again, which meant there’d be somewhere between five and ten minutes before he jerked awake. Sebastian, as always, took the opportunity to sneak away and put the kettle on. A soothing cup of honeyed chamomile tea was a good excuse for his absence from the bed; Blaine never seemed to remember what his bad dreams were about and Sebastian sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

He managed, yet again, to time it perfectly so he was just coming back into the room, mug clutched in his hand, when Blaine jerked awake. The wide-eyed look of confused terror was a little too familiar but, like always, it quickly faded as Blaine took in his surroundings and burrowed just a little bit deeper into the blankets wrapped around him.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said, taking the mug from Sebastian’s hands and looking up at him with so much love and adoration it was almost painful.

“Course I do,” Sebastian said, forcing his tone to be light and carefree. “I know how much it helps.” 


	4. Never Ever Saw the Northern Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confession of love

“I think I love you,” Blaine said tentatively. “Or I could. One day soon.” It was pretty much the total opposite of his first love confession, the total opposite of everything him, really. But Sebastian probably wouldn’t react in the calm, collected manner Kurt had to anything more. Even this was dangerous. 

After a long minute Sebastian sighed, “Love only exists in the moonlight, killer.”   
  
“Let’s move then,” he replied, slowly becoming more exuberant. “We’ll spend half the year at the North Pole and the other half at the South. If it’s always night time, there’s always moonlight.”   
  
“Not during a new moon,” Sebastian countered.   
  
Blaine chewed on his lip, contemplating this new angle. “That is true,” he nodded. “Well I guess a day off every once in a while would be okay.”   
  
“In that case, I need to go shopping. I don’t think I own anything fit for arctic temperatures.”


	5. These Lives That We've Tendered Away

As he sleeps, Sebastian whispers into his skin. Answers all the questions ever asked he could never bring himself to say.  _Did you miss me? Did you think about me when I was away? Will you marry me one day?_

Replies etched onto bared skin; tattooed their by Sebastian’s lips.  _Yes. Every second and every minute of every day. I’d marry you right now._

Whispers in the dead of the night. Breathed out as the sun rose, golden and glowing, heralding a new dawn. 

The only reply is the beeping of machines, patiently waiting for the slumbering patient to awake.


	6. love never forgets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: character death

Love never forgets.

Until it does. Until he can’t recall the timbre of his laugh or the way he smelled as he got dressed in the morning. Until he forgets the specific shade of his eyes and how many freckles he had on his left shoulder. (Fewer than on the right, he knows. But he can’t recollect the exact configuration of either.)

Every day a bit more slips away into oblivion.

Even the harsh edges are smoothed over. Fits of anger and cutting words softened. Annoying habits transforming into fond quirks. The memory of reality becomes weaker and all that is left is a fantasy of the man he loved. (Loved? Loves. Still. Always.) In death finally achieving the perfection he lacked in life.

He doesn’t even realize the man in his head had never been alive to begin with; he’s nothing more than a distorted reflection of the man he once knew. More his than he had ever been.  _Only_  his, really.

Just another form of forgetting.

Eventually he can drink coffee without thinking about it. An improvement everyone tells him.

He thinks he believes them.

Every day the ghost of the past fades away. Sometimes it comes slamming back into him, if only for a brief second, and he raises his eyes to the heavens and whispers promises of love and eternity.

He stops thinking about him all the time. Doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until he suddenly remembers to. For days after he feels guilty and refuses to let himself forget again. Intentionally, he plays slideshow upon slideshow of pictures and listens to old recordings in an act of punishing repentance.

He swears to always remember.

Love, after all, never forgets. (Until the next time it does.)


	7. Penumbra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: more character death

—

He wants to describe the sensation as drowning, but it’s both so much more and so much less. It’s hopelessness tinged by the desperate fantasy that one morning he’ll wake up to the smell of coffee and roses on the kitchen table. It’s the gaping nothingness of numbness and the shattered splintering of everything hurting.  
Every breath is a struggle, but he knows they’re going to keep coming.

.

Two weeks before they were fighting. He doesn’t remember about what. It’s inconsequential now. Like everything else. But he remembers the yelling and the slammed doors and the three nights spent apart because they couldn’t stand to even be in the same room.

—

The bed is too big. It was never too big before. If anything it was sometimes too small; during the long hot days of summer with limbs sprawled in the sticky heat and they couldn’t get far enough away from one another. Or when mock tussles lead to all too real flailing and the sharp exhale of breath as their backs hit the floor.

—-

They made love, the night before. The marks were still on his chest when he got the call.   
There was meat on the counter, defrosting for a dinner never eaten.   
His wallet had been left behind in the wrong coat.

.-.

Sometimes he forgets; sees something in the corner of his eye and relaxes his body in anticipation of an embrace that never comes. Or he’s rushing in the morning and calls back to the bedroom, brought to sudden awareness when the silence stretches on too long and the memory crashes into him so ferociously that he can barely stay standing.

..

They had both grown up with the fear that love was temporary. That it was something you had to work to earn and that it could be revoked at a moment’s notice.   
But on the shimmering cusp of a mid-July twilight, they had promised each other that, together, they would discover what it meant to be loved for a lifetime.

.-

(At least one of them knew.)

—


	8. A Lot of Nice Things Turn Bad Out There

His feet pounded on the pavement. Thundered down the stairs. “Come on. Come on,” he chanted under his breath, weight anxiously being shifted from one foot to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. “Come on.”

All around people were staring. Watching his anxiety. Making up stories in their own minds to explain away his actions. Not a novelty, as such. Not in this city. A temporary entertainment for the listless crowd.

With a clattering and a shriek, the subway came to a halt. People poured out. People rushed in. He was swept along.

One stop. Two stops. His hand clutching the overhead rail. Keeping him stable. “Shit. Come on.” Seven stops still to go and another four blocks after that. “Fuck.”

The tie around his neck felt too tight. He pulled at it making it too loose. Tightened it again and endured the suffocation.

The doors opened and he shoved his way through. “Move,” he hissed at everyone blocking his way. In front of him he wielded his bouquet like a shield. Stems clutched tightly in his hand, he forced his way through the turnstile.

He sprinted up the street, dress shoes sliding out beneath him. Passed the coffee shop they spent their Saturdays in and the bar they frequented on the Fridays they were too lazy to go further afield.

His tie whipped into his eyes and petals fell off leaving a desolate trail in his wake.

He didn’t bother to say anything to the doorman that always scowled at him. Ran passed him and to the elevator. Frantically jabbing the button. Impatiently waiting.

The endless ride up and the chiming  _ding_  that meant he was almost at his destination.

The carpet flying beneath his feet. Blues, and yellows, and greens blurring together.

Light glinting off the brass 717 as his fist hammered at the door.

“Come on. Fuck, come on.”

No one answered. 


	9. Between the Sand and Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for day 4 of seblaine week 2015. Hogwarts AU. 
> 
> warning: character death

Magic was supposed to be the answer. It was supposed to make everything better, easier. It’s what he had been told, his first week at Hogwarts as he stared in wide-eyed wonderment at the mysterious world before him.

(Blaine had been the first person to talk to him. “Oh, hello. I thought this carriage was empty. Have a good trip!” He had chirped before waving and ducking back out into the corridor.)

But magic hadn't even known. Hadn't known what was wrong with Blaine or how to treat him. Magic had assured them that Blaine was getting better, not worse. That the weakness and fatigue were reactions to the treatment and not new symptoms. 

The magical world had denied them the ability to seek other 'alternative' options, like a muggle hospital that might have (almost certainly would have) known what they were doing and how to cure they 'foreign' malady that had infected his husband.

Because of magic, Blaine, who came from a pureblood family that lived well past one hundred, had left the world before he even turned 25. 

Of all the stupid and senseless things that Sebastian had tolerated from the world, this was the most stupid. The most senseless.  

Blaine could have lived. Sebastian knew it, just as surely and as clearly as he had ever known anything. 

Blaine would still be alive if it weren't for the arrogance of magic. 

Sebastian had thrown his wand into the coffin next to the man he loved. Interred the two side by side and left the magical world behind, a hollowed shadow of himself.


End file.
